Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
Are not all humans "absolutely identical?" Each has a head, body, two arms and two legs? Each head is "identical" with two eyes, two ears, one mouth and one nose. Cut them open and they all look the same -- heart, lungs, liver, stomach, etc. You get the message.
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Yes, I looked down on the basketball court and there was a basketball team. All with the same shape, form, purpose. All had on the same uniforms. But one of them was tall and slender, one was thick and powerful, and one was small and speedy.
So they are "absolutely identical" if you mean they are humans. Or lampstands. Or whatever the class. Same "life and nature". Same "gold", beaten fine, into a utensil (a lampstand).
But "without any individual distinctions"? What kind of a God is this? God wants all His children (remember the lampstands are churches, composed of people) to be without any individual distinctions? This is a God of Human Culture, not a God that I want. This is the God of this age, pushing for control through conformity to an all-too-human model. The Conform-and-Submit God of this age.
Do you think an American would have written that footnote? Or a Pole or a Swede? We don't think that way. We value the individual. We allow distinctiveness. Yes we have issues, too, with our cultural make-ups. But we wouldn't have looked at "seven golden lampstands" and written the
RecV footnote in Revelation 1:20. No, that was shot through with Lee's cultural presuppositions.
Where did this kind of teaching come from but from fallen human culture? Not from the text.